Burning oil rig sinks in Gulf, setting stage for big spill

Friday, April 23, 2010

By KEVIN McGILL and HOLBROOK MOHR ~ The Associated Press

Oil is shown Wednesday in the Gulf of Mexico, more than 50 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana's tip, as the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burns. The deepwater oil platform, which burned for more than a day after a massive explosion, sank into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday. (Gerald Herbert ~ Associated Press)

NEW ORLEANS -- A deepwater oil platform that burned for more than day after a massive explosion sank into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, creating the potential for a major spill as it underscored the slim chances that the 11 workers still missing survived.

The sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, which burned violently until the gulf itself extinguished the fire, could unleash more than 300,000 of gallons of crude a day into the water. The environmental hazards would be greatest if the spill were to reach the Louisiana coast, some 50 miles away.

Crews searched by air and water for the missing workers, hoping they had managed to reach a lifeboat, but one relative said family members have been told it's unlikely any of the missing survived Tuesday night's blast. More than 100 workers escaped the explosion and fire; four were critically injured.

Carolyn Kemp of Monterey, La., said her grandson, Roy Wyatt Kemp, 27, was among the missing. She said he would have been on the drilling platform when it exploded.

"They're assuming all those men who were on the platform are dead," Kemp said. "That's the last we've heard."

A fleet of supply vessels had shot water into the rig to try to control the fire enough to keep it afloat and keep crude oil and diesel fuel out of the water. Officials had previously said the environmental damage appeared minimal, but new challenges have arisen now that the platform has sunk.

The well could be spilling up to 336,000 gallons of crude oil a day, Coast Guard Petty Officer Katherine McNamara said. She said she didn't know whether the crude oil was spilling into the gulf. The rig also carried 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel, but that would likely evaporate if the fire didn't consume it.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said crews saw a 1-mile-by-5-mile sheen of what appeared to be a crude oil mix on the surface of the water. She said there wasn't any evidence crude oil was coming out after the rig sank, but officials also aren't sure what's going on underwater. They have dispatched a vessel to check.

The oil will do much less damage at sea than it would if it hits the shore, said Cynthia Sarthou, executive director of the Gulf Restoration Network.

"If it gets landward, it could be a disaster in the making," Sarthou said.

Doug Helton, incident operations coordinator for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's office of response and restoration, said the spill is not expected to come onshore in next three to four days. "But if the winds were to change, it could come ashore more rapidly," he said.

At the worst-case figure of 336,000 gallons a day, it would take more than a month for the amount of crude oil spilled to equal the 11 million gallons spilled from the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound.

The well will need to be capped off underwater. Coast Guard Petty Officer Ashley Butler said crews were prepared for the platform to sink and had the equipment at the site to limit the environmental damage.

Oil giant BP, which contracted the rig, said it has mobilized four aircraft that can spread chemicals to break up the oil and 32 vessels, including a big storage barge, that can suck more than 171,000 barrels of oil a day from the surface.

Crews searching for the missing workers, meanwhile, have covered the 1,940-square-mile search area by air 12 times and by boat five times. The boats searched all night.

The family of Dewey Revette, a 48-year-old from southeast Mississippi, said he was also among the missing. He worked as a driller on the rig and had been with the company for 29 years.

"We're all just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring and hoping for good news. And praying about it," said Revette's 23-year-old daughter, Andrea Cochran.

Adrian Rose, vice president of rig owner Transocean Ltd., said Thursday some surviving workers said in company interviews that their missing colleagues may not have been able to evacuate in time. He said he was unable to confirm whether that was the case.

Those who escaped did so mainly by getting on lifeboats that were lowered into the gulf, Rose said. Weekly emergency drills seemed to help, he said, adding that he heard of workers looking after each other as they fled the devastating blast.

"There was very little panic," Rose said.

Family members of one missing worker, Shane Roshto of Liberty, Miss., filed a lawsuit in New Orleans on Thursday accusing Transocean of negligence. The suit said Roshto was thrown overboard by the explosion and is feared dead, though it did not indicate how family members knew what happened.

The suit also names BP. Transocean did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the suit and BP declined to discuss it.

The U.S. Minerals Management Service, which regulates oil rigs, conducted three routine inspections of the Deepwater Horizon this year -- in February, March and on April 1 -- and found no violations, agency spokeswoman Eileen Angelico said.

The rig was doing exploratory drilling about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana when the explosion and fire occurred, sending a column of boiling black smoke hundreds of feet over the gulf.

Rose has said the explosion appeared to be a blowout, in which natural gas or oil forces its way up a well pipe and smashes the equipment. But precisely what went wrong was under investigation.

Transocean Ltd. spokesman Guy Cantwell said 111 workers who made it off the Deepwater Horizon safely after Tuesday night's blast were ashore Thursday, and four others were still on a boat that operates an underwater robot. A robot will eventually be used to stop the flow of oil or gas to the rig, cutting off the fire. He said officials have not decided when that will happen.

A slow trek across the water brought most of the uninjured survivors to Port Fourchon, where they were checked by doctors before being brought to a hotel in suburban New Orleans to reunite with their relatives.

One worker said he was awakened by alarms and scrambled to get on a lifeboat.

"I've been working offshore 25 years and I've never seen anything like this before," said the man, who like others at the hotel declined to give his name.

Stanley Murray of Monterey, La., was reunited with his son, Chad, an electrician aboard the rig who had ended his shift just before the explosion.

"If he had been there five minutes later, he would have been burned up," Stanley Murray said.

Rose said the crew had drilled the well to its final depth, more than 18,000 feet, and was cementing the steel casing at the time of the explosion. They had little time to evacuate, he said.

The blast could be among the nation's deadliest offshore drilling accidents of the past half-century.

One of the deadliest was in 1964, when a blowout and explosion killed 21 crew members of a catamaran-type drilling barge about 80 miles off Louisiana. The world's deadliest offshore drilling explosion was in 1988 off Aberdeen, Scotland; 167 men were killed.

According to Transocean's website, the rig was built in 2001 in South Korea and is designed to operate in water up to 8,000 feet deep, drill 51/2 miles down, and accommodate a crew of 130. It floats on pontoons and is moored to the sea floor by several large anchors.

Working on offshore oil rigs is a dangerous job but has become safer in recent years thanks to improved training, safety systems and maintenance, said Joe Hurt, regional vice president for the International Association of Drilling Contractors.

Since 2001, there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries and 858 fires and explosions in the gulf, according to the Minerals Management Service. Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Mike O'Berry said accidents are rare given that 30,000 people work on rigs there every day.

"They're highly trained. They know the dangers," O'Berry said. "The safety precautions they take are extreme. A testament to that is of the 126, 115 are home today with their families."